Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/350

 probably conversant in mercantile affairs?'—'No, ma'am, I am come to learn,'—and so on. After some time, I told them that I never saw people in the morning, and would take my leave of them, as they probably would wish to set off early; and I desired them to order what they liked for their breakfast. Next morning, when I thought, as a matter of course, they were gone, in came a note from them to say, they were not going till next day, and then another to say they did not know, and then a third to say that, as they expected ships, and God knows what, they must go.—Good God! they might go to the devil for me: I had taken my leave of them, and there was an end of it. Mr. C. was a downright vulgar merchant's clerk, come to Syria, I suppose, to set up for himself. Lord St. Asaph said to me—'Lady Hester, you really should consider who you are, and not allow people of that description to pay visits to you.'

"There was a man who bore a great resemblance to the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Clarence, but something between both, who passed two or three years in this neighbourhood and sometimes came to see me; he was good-natured, and I liked him. He went about with a sort of pedlar's box, full of trinkets and gewgaws to show to the peasant woman, thus bringing the whole population of the village out of